Interview: Zach Braff on the Controversial Journey to "Here"

Few films landed in Park City this year with more baggage than Zach Braff's "Wish I Was Here." After years of trying to get the project off the ground through traditional financing routes, Braff turned to Kickstarter in April 2013 to see if his fans could essentially become the producers of a film he felt they would want to see. It worked better than anyone could have expected as funds crested $2 million in three days. And it created more controversy than Braff was prepared for as critics of the actor/director/writer came out against the very concept of a star asking his fans for money. The conversation around the making of "Wish I Was Here" overshadowed the film itself to a degree as more people wanted to weigh in on the future of crowdfunding than actually discuss if the movie worked or not. The film will be released this Friday and a very-open Braff sat down with me last month to address a lot of his critics and basically tell them to move on.

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Whenever someone takes this long between films, I’m curious
how the time impacts the final product. How would “Wish I Was Here” have been
different if you had made it eight years ago?

ZACH BRAFF: I may have given into more compromises. When you have a lot
of heat, as I did in the “Garden State” success era, the studios all want to
make movies with you. And, in doing that, you have to make a lot of compromises
to make what they want to make. I think in trying to navigate the waters on
other projects and trying to navigate the film-financing world in 2014 now, it’s
just so insane that I wouldn’t have made a film that I’m as proud of as this because
I would have been more willing to say, “I’ll give in there. I’ll give in on
that.” It would have been a filtered-down version of what my brother and I had
written. Whereas with this, I hit rock bottom—no one wanted to make it—and then
the whole crowdfunding aspect of it, there was an uber-grassroots vibe about
it. Our mantra was “We’re not going to compromise on anything. We’re going to
make exactly what we want to make.” I think if I had made it earlier, it would have
been through the studio system and it would have been a very different movie.

How do you instill creative checks and balances? You give
some people a blank check from studio or crowdfunding and tell them “Go do
whatever you want,” and you’re going to end up with a product that doesn’t
work.

Yeah, of course. First and foremost, my brother is the polar
opposite of a “Yes Man.” We want healthy debate. And I have really good
producers. My producers are strong that I would say, “This is the way I’m
cutting it. DO NOT bring it up again.” And then, like 48 hours later, [they’d
say], “I want to talk about that scene again.” Yes men are useless. The dumbest
thing you can do is surround yourself with yes men. You want to be challenged.
Bill Lawrence, who’s a mentor of mine—I remember early on in “Garden State,” I
had a scene in the movie that I was really proud of and it was kind of jarring
but it was cockblocking the ending of the movie. He saw an early cut and he
said, “You can’t see this yet but that will never be in the movie.” I was so
indignant and got mad at him. And he did that in this one too. I showed him an
early cut and he said, “Here’s a couple things that you won’t see for,
probably, four months.” He’s very good. The answer to your question, which is a
good one, is you’re making a giant mistake if you surround yourself with yes
men and women. I surround myself with people who will challenge me. Ultimately,
it comes down to you, but you want to be challenged and, then, filter that all,
and then go with your gut.

So you’d say that the studios that didn’t want to make this
or other projects weren’t “challenging” but “blocking”? I’m trying to get at
the differences between creative challenging and blocking productivity at all
in the system.

It’s such an obstacle course to get something made,
independently and in the studio system. It’s so dependent on fickle movie
stars. I had four movies fall apart because of movie stars in and out. And
then, when they fall out, you go into months and months of limbo. Ask anyone in
the business. You want to bang your head against the wall. It’s AMAZING that
anything ever gets made. Big titles are going to get made—”The Fault in Our
Stars” is going to made; Marvel is going to get made; things that are sure are
going to get made. But anything that’s REMOTELY unique, the fact that it gets
made is a miracle.

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The mid-level budget movie is disappearing.

It’s gone. By the way, studios don’t “make” these movies.
They buy them at festivals. They don’t risk this money.

The theme of many of my interviews in the last several years
has been this. Kevin Spacey, William H. Macy both told me independently that
the $10 million budgeted film is gone.

And, by the way, both of the actors you just mentioned—two of
our BEST—are in television now. Why? Dude.

Movies like this stop being made.

No one is making these movies.

So, what do we do to fix it?

I don’t know. I don’t know. The thing about is…what seems to
be happening a little bit is that they’re almost becoming their own smaller
subgenre. You have Tyler Perry, for example, who’s found his audience, which
you can do now in 2014 better than ever, and just make a movie for that
audience. And, if they’re successful enough, you just cycle the money back into
the next movie. He’s had success at that. He’s the ultimate example. You see
that with little subgenres. Jason Statham is another example. Edgar Wright is
another example. These filmmakers develop such a core fan base that their films
will get made for the fan base for that unique thing. It has to be a
substantial enough fan base to warrant it.

The system is so broken because it’s more dependent than
ever on the success of actors in foreign box office numbers. Those actors,
while often very wonderful, can be very wrong for what you’re doing. And so the
movie is often a lesser version of what the filmmaker intended because it’s
compromised from the get-go. That’s a big problem. I guess you could
pontificate that if crowdfunding goes to the next level, like what Hollywood
Stock Exchange has been doing forever—find a way that people could invest in a
movie like a stock and have equity stake. That’s fun for people to ruminate on.
This was always an experiment. I’m not going to go crowdfund all of my films.
The experiment was always “What if…” Sure, people would go apeshit on the internet.
But, what if we were able to fully have control and I was the CEO of the
corporation making “Wish I Was Here.”

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When’s the model as broken as it is, why not try different
things?

Try anything. I saw Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, on “60
Minutes,” and they asked him what he says to all of his critics, and he said, “Complaining
is not a strategy.” Here’s this guy who had an idea and everyone says it will
never work. It works on a level that has FUNDAMENTALLY changed the way retail
works on Earth, and now people are upset with it. He says, “You have to keep
up.” All I’m trying to do is keep up. Fear not, detractors, I’m not going to go
crowdfund on Kickstarter, but this was an experiment—”The system is so broken,
what if…” It worked so quickly that the people who had already written their
think pieces had to write a NEW think piece about how angry they were that it
worked.

Did you anticipate the degree of the apeshit?

(Laughs.) NO! Of course not. Asked me if I anticipated that
I would have to explain crowdfunding to Earth. As I’m sitting here explaining
financing, you’re nodding because you’re savvy and you write about this. I was naïve
or stupid enough to not know that the onus would be on me to explain what we
just said to EARTH. You and I can talk about this and we’ll get it but there
was SO MUCH misinformation and, shockingly, by entertainment journalist blogger
folk. I was like, “Guys, gals, report on it. It’s an interesting debate. But
report on it correctly.” Google what Kickstarter is. Don’t ask about equity
stake. You KNOW there’s no equity stake. If you took 30 seconds to Google
Kickstarter.

Listen, someone writing something negative about me who is
not a fan of me on Twitter is one thing. That linking to a blogger with 15
thousand followers whose title says “Entertainment Writer”? I was baffled at
how irresponsible it was. There is a debate to be had. Let’s have that debate.
But be informed. Don’t go into the debate with your facts all wrong.

I was stunned by some of the lazy journalism around
Kickstarter contributors not getting into Sundance screenings.

Let me tell you something that you know—clickbait is the
only way that anyone makes money. It’s the demise of your profession. If there’s
one backer who’s a fan with a sign, the journalist is sprinting to that person for
a clickbait story.

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There was an agenda [at Sundance].

When all of that happens, do you then feel more pressure to
deliver?

It’s clear that I’m a polarizing creator of content. I’m
fine with that. So are ALL of the people that I look up to. I became a
filmmaker because of Woody Allen. I think it’s pretty safe to say that he’s
about as polarizing as it gets.

Does it add to the nervousness to prove them wrong?

This WHOLE experiment was about doing something for the
fans. If you’re online talking about how much you hate me, you’re not the
market for this. Guess what, I’ve never been to a Tyler Perry movie and look at
the fucking size of the guy’s fan base! He doesn’t need me. And I don’t need
the people that abhor me. I’m trying to make a film for the people who like
what I do. That’s what this experiment was. And it worked so successfully that,
here in Chicago, we had to break into three screenings [for the Kickstarter
supporters]. There’s a demand for it. There will be a plethora of articles
written by people who abhor me about how much they hated the film. Do you think
they went into the film with an open mind? Come on.

It’s possible that some were drafting tweets before the
screening at Sundance.

Of COURSE they were. I’m friends with a blogger who didn’t
even give the film that great a review—he gave it lukewarm review, but whatever—and
he said that, “Dude, I wish I had a tape recorder for the chatter before the
movie started.” I’m not an idiot. I know that that’s happening. What can I
possibly do about that?

Nothing. Does making it for the fans add to your tension at
all? Now you have to deliver for those fans.

Of course, of COURSE. When you make a normal movie, you’re
just trying to deliver for the financiers. I have 47,000 people!

So, when those three screenings are happening here in
Chicago, are you biting your nails?

Of course. I’m pacing. I’ve been to enough now where the
response is amazing. There was a standing ovation at Sundance. I’ve been to
enough screenings with the core of the fan base and they go crazy. Why? It was
tailor made for them. I had a pretty good sense after “Scrubs” and “Garden
State” and “Last Kiss” and my play, what the people who like what I do like. If
I make something for THEM, I think those people are going to like it. Is
everyone going to like it? No. But will the core? Hopefully.

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Once you had funding in place, what’s next? Did you have the
cast in place?

I cast it like that—bam, bam, bam.

Did you write with any of them in mind?

That’s a good question. I probably wrote for Joey [King]. We
had made “Oz: The Great and Powerful” together. She’s a star. She’s a savant,
man. She’s like a kid on the web who can play Mozart on the piano. I knew her
ability. I wrote a little bit for her. That scene where she calls [Josh] Gad—I was
behind the lens [speechless]. She can bring it. She’s a star. She’s a household
name next year.

The only one? It seems a part really built for Josh.

Everything gets tailored. I’ve offered Kate [Hudson]
everything since “Garden State.” I was so in love with her after “Almost
Famous.” I know she’s hot and funny and so her bread-and-butter is these silly
romantic comedies. I was so in love with her that I thought I wanted to make a
movie with her one day. She’s so pretty but her acting ability is beyond the
average hot movie star. Like Natalie [Portman]. We’re friendly. I’ve offered a
lot of stuff. She almost did my play in London. Once I cast people, I shift.
For example, when Natalie taps in “Garden State,” we were fucking around and
she just did that and I found a moment for that. I try to find moments to
personalize once people have signed on the dotted line.

If the part was right, would you go back to TV?

Yeah, yeah. I totally would. It would have to be New York
because I’m L.A.-ed out.

Why?

I was there 14 years, man. Don’t get me wrong. I have a
house there. I just don’t want to sign a 7-year contract that says I have to be
there. I’m 39 years old and if there’s one accomplishment I have it’s that I
don’t have to sign a contract that says I have to be in L.A. for 10 years. It would
have to be New York. Probably with Bill. And the right thing. It’s where all
the good shit is happening. And if you say, “I’m only going to be a film actor,”
you’re going to work every three years if you only want to do things that are
good.

I’m doing a Broadway show—Woody Allen’s first musical. And I’m
doing that until the end of the year. In September, I’m off, because there’s so
much support for this in Europe that we have a tour in Europe and Russia.

Was “Garden State” big over there?

“Garden State” was big in the major cities—London, Paris,
Rome. “Scrubs” was enormous over there. “Scrubs” was bigger in the U.K. and
Germany than it ever was in the States.

Any idea why that is?

Sense of humor. I’m told it’s a very British sense of humor.
The Germans fucking loved it. I’m like Hasselhoff in Germany.

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